You may not have noticed, but Google has been spiffing up its Data Explorer. Poking around you see nice illustrations of phenomena which you otherwise may just read about. For example, Argentina has been one of the classic illustrations in economic history of stagnation. To a great extent it peaked around 1900, and development has been erratic since then. This is clear when you see how much its neighbors and other Latin American nations have caught up:

Cubans are living long compared with others in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Frederick

This graphic would be much more informative if it was at Purchasing Power Parity, rather than using raw U.S. $ – there is *no* *way* that Venezuelans are economically better off than Argentines – that number is wildly skewed by petroleum exports.

Argentina’s decline has been a relative one rather than a real one, Argentina is still much more proseperous today than it was 100 years ago, it’s just that some other countries have grown even faster and a few have surpassed it, Chile being the most notable example. One legacy of its past relative prosperity is that its income distribution is somewhat more equal than Brazil or Mexico, which is why Argentina “feels” so much more middle class and prosperous than those two countries (although Brazil is making great strides recently to reduce inequality). It may be noted also that Argentina actually has a higher birth rate than Mexico or Brazil, so GDP per capita may skew lower to account for more children – household income may be a better measure.

Puerto Rico’s young and ambitious have been moving to the (rest of the) U.S. for decades, first to NYC and the northeast, more recently to Orlando and south Florida, to the extent that there are now more Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. off the island than on the island. PR and Michigan were the only two states/jurisdictions to suffer a population loss between 2000 and 2010. Maybe those left behind are older and generally less vigorous and that explains the lower fertility rate?

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp Razib Khan

#3, every time i use PPP people complain it is misleading. every time i don’t, people complain.

http://ironrailsironweights.wordpress.com Peter

Why do Black nations lead the way in the region? In 2004, they were the top 3. Is it due to the British link?

They’re all small countries, possibly that’s the main factor.

Puerto Rico’s young and ambitious have been moving to the (rest of the) U.S. for decades

While the bulk of the Puerto Rican migration to the Northeast has run its course, when it was going strong I can assure you it was not comprised of the island’s ambitious people.

Frederick

#4 damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Actually I don’t think raw GDP vs. PPP are going to diverge much in this case, apart from the Venzuelan outlier.

#1 – a certain few British-Caribbean countries are at the top, most notably Barbados and the Bahamas, two countries that have been stable liberal democracies since independence and arguably the most culturally “British” of the islands (both actually have sizable white and mixed Afro-European populations, for example the green-eyed Rihanna from Barbados). Also Trinidad is high up there with its mixed African and Indian population, it has a developed industrial and petroleum-based economy. By contrast, Guyana is one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere while Jamaica, the largest of the British-Caribbean countries, is a notorious train-wreck economically, though it has managed to maintain a turbulent democracy since independence.

http://ironrailsironweights.wordpress.com Peter

Jamaica, the largest of the British-Caribbean countries, is a notorious train-wreck economically

Jamaica’s not doing all that badly on the GDP scale compared to the other larger countries in its region. Comparable to the Dominican Republic, better than the Central American countries other than Panama and Costa Rica, way better than Haiti.

Frederick

#7 – Jamaica is certainly not the worst-off country in the hemisphere economically, much less the worst-off in the world; I was responding to a poster who said that the “Black nations lead the way in the region” – my point was that it wasn’t as clear-cut as that. Jamaica *is* a basket-case compared to Barbados and the Bahamas, but definitely not compared to Nicaragua or Haiti. Jamaica, though, has as many people as all the other British-Caribbean countries combined, so to exclude it from the “Black nations” isn’t really logical.

Discover's Newsletter

Sign up to get the latest science news delivered weekly right to your inbox!

Gene Expression

This blog is about evolution, genetics, genomics and their interstices. Please beware that comments are aggressively moderated. Uncivil or churlish comments will likely get you banned immediately, so make any contribution count!

About Razib Khan

I have degrees in biology and biochemistry, a passion for genetics, history, and philosophy, and shrimp is my favorite food. In relation to nationality I'm a American Northwesterner, in politics I'm a reactionary, and as for religion I have none (I'm an atheist). If you want to know more, see the links at http://www.razib.com